Name is the Surface

Name is the Surface

Name is the Surface is a solo exhibition of work by the Texas-born, Pittsburgh-based artist
Corey Escoto. Presenting a group of
manipulated Polaroid photographs accompanied by corresponding sculptures taking
the photographic images as their structural blueprint, Escoto inverts and
explores the relationship of the three-dimensional world to the flat, two-dimensional surface of its representation.

Escoto
uses the recently discontinued Fuji Color FP-100c45 ‘Polaroid’ film, the last
commercial 4x5 instant film stock available which expires this year. “With this
in mind, I am interested in the simultaneous emergence of digital photographic
technologies, the waning of analog photography, the vast archive of images
available via the Internet, and the possibilities that exist for the short time
that these technologies coexist,” Escoto writes.

By modifying the camera
to allow for the layering of hand-cut stencils and filters over his film,
multiple exposures record and reveal flummoxing visuals that are of the real
world and yet are not documents of anything that could be found on the other
side of the camera’s view finder. Playing with the supposed photographic
truthfulness of the Polaroid, Escoto’s slight of hand invokes the
photographer-as-magician, the medium as deceptive as it is representational.

Escoto’s
sculptures further subvert the relationship of the image to its subject, a
reversal of the photographic process where the three-dimensional mimics the
two-dimensional original. His work is an interplay of surface and materials,
the simultaneity of analog and digital, and the particular nature of materials
and their substitutes (such as marble and its simulation, Formica), and photographs of
those surfaces. And while the reverse engineered sculptural forms are an attempt
to turn back time, decompress space, and reconnect with a simple pleasure of
tactility, they also carry a political subtext, bringing to mind the permanence
(or disposability) of built environments, structures of power, and the willing
suspension of disbelief.

Escoto
received a BFA from Texas Tech University in 2004 and an MFA from Washington
University in St. Louis in 2007. Escoto has shown both nationally and
internationally, with select solo exhibitions at the Contemporary Art Museum
of St. Louis, Regina Rex, Queens, N.Y., as well as an upcoming exhibition at the
Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh. His work has been included in
exhibitions at Smack Mellon, Brooklyn, the ArtHouse at Jones Center in Austin,
and international venues that include ACC Galerie, Weimar, Germany; Seven Days
Brunch, Basel; and FRAC Nord-Pas De Calais, Dunkerque, France. He is a recipient of
the Gateway Foundation Grant, an Aperture Portfolio Prize finalist, and a Kala
Art Institute Residency Program and Fellowship Award. The artist currently
resides in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, with his mint and cilantro plants and is a
single parent of a seedling cherry tree.

This exhibit will have an Artist Talk in Room 118A, Sprowls Hall on March 19, 2015, at 5:00 p.m. with a reception to follow. Also, just a reminder that the gallery will be closed during spring break.

Gallery Hours

Monday through Friday: 12:00 p.m.–4:00 p.m.Closed weekends and university holidays